Amir Darwish
The following poem is a part of the upcoming title “Strings of Love and Pain”, slated to be published in 2019 by Smokestack, England, and has been reproduced with the author’s permission.
From the earth I come
To the earth I come
From the heart of Africa
From the kidneys of Asia
From India with spices I come
From a deep Amazonian forest
From a Tibetan meadow I come
From an ivory land
From far
From everywhere around me
From where there are trees, mountains, rivers and seas
From here, there, from everywhere
From the womb of the Mediterranean I come
From a mental scar
From closed borders
From a camp with a thousand tents
From shores with Alan[1] the Kurd I come
From a bullet wound
From the face of a lone child
From a single mother’s sigh
From a cut in an inflatable boat about to sink
From a bottle of water for fifty to share
From frozen snot in a toddler’s nose
From a tear on a father’s cheek
From a hungry stomach
From a graffiti that reads, “I was here once”
From another one a tree says “I love life”
From a missing limb
Like a human with everything I come to share the space.
[1] Alan Kurdi (Kurdish: Alan Kurdî), initially reported as Aylan Kurdi, was a three-year-old Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background whose image made global headlines after he drowned on 2 September 2015 in the Mediterranean Sea during a cross-continental journey as an asylum seeker.
Amir Darwish is a British Syrian poet and writer of Kurdish origin. He was born in Aleppo and later arrived in Britain as an asylum seeker in 2003. Amir completed an MA from Durham University before moving to London, where he currently lives & writes. He has published his work in the UK, USA, Pakistan, India, Finland, Turkey, and Mexico. He tweets at @darwish_amir.
Amir Darwish is a British Syrian poet and writer of Kurdish origin. He was born in Aleppo and later arrived in Britain as an asylum seeker in 2003. Amir completed an MA from Durham University before moving to London, where he currently lives & writes. He has published his work in the UK, USA, Pakistan, India, Finland, Turkey, and Mexico.
